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Last year, Google began penalizing sites that were not mobile-friendly. As of January 10, 2017, Google has once again updated its algorithm to help increase mobile-friendly sites’ ranking. This time they are focusing on getting rid of intrusive interstitials. Why? They want to increase their user experience and be able to view content on a page without having to immediately exit the ad. This doesn’t mean you can’t have an ad on your site — it just needs to be adjusted so that it increases a user’s experience.

If your website is not mobile-friendly or contains pop-ups,
this could significantly affect your valuable SEO.

How does this affect you? If your website is mobile compatible it will be awarded higher rankings in search results than a website without mobile capacity. If your website is not mobile-friendly or contains lots of pop-ups this could significantly affect your valuable SEO.

So what does a mobile-friendly website mean exactly? If your website is responsive to different screen sizes and viewed on multiple devices, you are on the right track. And with the new algorithm in place, it means not having any intrusive interstitials (web pages displayed before or after an expected content page).

Google recently stated: “Instead of full-page interstitials, we recommend that webmasters use more user-friendly formats such as app install banners. We hope that this change will make it easier for searchers to see the content of the pages they are looking for.”

So What is Allowed and What is Not Allowed?

WHAT IS NOT ALLOWED:

– A popup that covers the main content immediately when the user navigates to the page or while they are looking through the page
– Standalone interstitial that is displayed before user can gain access to the main content
– Page appears similar to standalone interstitial, but original content is underneath the above-the-fold portion